Into the wild: Renting a cottage in the country can be a refreshing holiday

There’s something refreshing about being taken away from your little home luxuries and forced to make do with your limited means on holidays, writes Kya deLongchamps

When we arrived at the cottage in Kerry, indulged by two decades of dry lining and a well-appointed kitchen, I whinged long and loud. A quivering lip from one of my teenage charges pulled me up short. Smiles were applied. ‘How cute is this, girls?’ Pushing through boughs of Japanese knotweed, the front door stuttered inward over rippling lino depicting slate.

The air was warm, soupy, fetid. Paint blistered at the base of the walls. Plastic rosaries, balded out over a few decades, swung from lamps and mirror frames. Mildewed prints of the Sacred Heart vied with cheering depictions of the Great Hunger, reminding us in the gathering gloom, how very lucky we were to be saved and have Taytos out of a pull-pack.